Author
Sir Walter Scott is documented in Fuller’s letters, books, published essays, reading notebooks, and manuscripts (1820–1849). 20 distinct works are named, most often in Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “analyzed”.
Harvard College Library loan
Charged out of Gore Hall on the card of Richard Frederick Fuller, Margaret's brother and then a Harvard senior; women could not borrow in their own name. Household access, not proof of her reading — not counted toward engagements. The full ledger →
Additional passages preserved in the Memoirs (1852)
Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →
Passages where the evidence goes beyond allusion to indicate that Fuller had Sir Walter Scott’s work in hand — an explicit statement of reading, sustained excerpting or translation, or a specific reading episode recorded by those who knew her.
“It was Guy Mannering, then lately published, and the first of Scott's novels I had ever seen.”
Mem-2 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli · then lately published
Specific, dated autobiographical account: 'It was Guy Mannering...the first of Scott's novels I had ever seen.'
“In what other journal shall we find an entry like the following, the sincerity of which no one can doubt: — " has, I think, a distaste for me, which I believe to be natural to the family. I think the worse of nobody for such a feeling; indeed, I often feel a distaste for myself; I am sure I should not esteem my own character in another person. It is more likely that I should have disrespectable or disagreeable qualities than that should have an unreasonable antipathy.”
This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.
Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.
“that person is illiberal who condemns Scotts and Edgeworths novels”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. I. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller defends Scott's novels as a body of work against her father's and Reverend Waldo's condemnation of fiction, arguing they are worth reading based on her own experience with them.
“The story alluded to in Peveril of the Peak of / the lady who deceived her guardian by means / of a subterranean passage is detailed here. / [illegible] I am mistaken it is in Woodstock.”
Fuller, Margaret. "Reading Notebook 1825–1827." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“I'll gang, I'll gang, Lord William, she said For ye've left me nae ither guide.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
“the attack which would not have offended Goethe or Scott probably will offend Mr Norton.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. VI. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Inferred Fuller invokes Scott as a figure whose literary tolerance (like Goethe's) would not have taken offense at Clarke's critical article, suggesting her familiarity with Scott as a literary authority.
“A Scott, a Goethe would neither talk out nor write down the reflections suggested by what the day had brought, they would be transfused into new works.”
Fuller, Margaret. "General Reading Notes." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“I know I can sympathize with all who feel and think, from a Dryfesdale up to a Max Piccolomini.”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Vol. I: 1817-1838. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller names the character "Dryfesdale".Fuller uses Dryfesdale as the lowest extreme on a spectrum of human sympathy.
“The Louis XI loses too much when we recollect Scott's fine engraving”
Fuller, Margaret. "To Frederic H. Hedge, 26 December 1834." In The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. I: 1817–1838, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, 215–217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
Inferred Fuller contrasts Hugo's Louis XI unfavorably with "Scott's fine engraving" of the same king; Hudspeth identified this as Louis XI in Scott's Quentin Durward.
“you do not study human nature with the loving eye of a Scott, a Shakspeare, a Cervantes, a Moliere, a Goethe, a Raphael, a Mozart”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
“The book affords play for similar powers, and brings a similar range of motives into action with Scott's fortunes of Nigel.”
Also reprinted in Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Counted once, at its first appearance.
Fuller, Margaret. "Notes on Balzac, George Sand, De Vigny, and Béranger." Houghton Library, Harvard University.
“act Helen Mac Gregor to those who love compromise, by doing my little best to sink them in the waters of Oblivion!”
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller. Edited by Robert N. Hudspeth. Vol. II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Inferred Fuller alludes to Helen MacGregor, the fierce wife of Rob Roy in Scott's novel Rob Roy (published Edinburgh, 1818). Hudspeth identified: 'Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife in Scott's novel (Edinburgh, 1818), is a fierce woman who threatens destruction to any who oppose her or her husband. 32.' Fuller names Helen MacGregor explicitly, identifying herself with this literary character to describe her editorial role.
Hudspeth identified: 'Helen MacGregor, Rob Roy's wife in Scott's novel (Edinburgh, 1818), is a fierce woman who threatens destruction to any who oppose her or her husband.
“and act Helen McGregor to those who love compromise, by doing my little best to sink them in the waters of Oblivion!!”
Fuller, Margaret. "Letter to Rev. W.H. Channing." Boston Public Library Archives & Special Collections; MS Am. 1450; Box: 1, Folder: 38.
Inferred Fuller invokes 'Helen McGregor' as a figure of fierce, uncompromising action — the character is Rob Roy's wife in Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy (1817), famous for her ferocity in defending her clan and her refusal to suffer compromise.
“Sir Walter Scott is prouder of being a good sheriff and farmer, than of his reputation as the Great Unknown.”
Fuller, Margaret. Life Without and Life Within; or, Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems. Edited by Arthur B. Fuller. Boston: Brown, Taggard and Chase, 1860. · p27
Inferred Sir Walter Scott is named explicitly and identified by his famous sobriquet "the Great Unknown," used before Scott publicly admitted authorship of the Waverley novels in 1827.
Passages surviving only in the posthumous Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, compiled by Emerson, Channing, and Clarke.
“It was Guy Mannering, then lately published^ and the first of Scott's novels I had ever seen.”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
“crushed in the very manner so well described by Scott... 'not as one who intentionally stoops”
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, William Henry Channing, and James Freeman Clarke, eds. Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 2 vols. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company, 1852.
Inferred Margaret Fuller engages with Walter Scott's descriptive power, likely referencing an unspecified novel by the author. She recalls a passage on a person "crushed in the very manner so well described by Scott," noting how the individual was not "as one who intentionally stoops" but rather bowed by an "invisible force," suggesting a moment of profound, involuntary suffering.